RIVERS END: CALIFORNIA’S LATEST WATER WAR (2021) DIR. JACOB MORRISON © 2021 Thin Ice Entertainment LLC

The gorgeousness of the cinematography of breathtaking rivers and lakes and wilderness is reason enough to see this informative documentary which addresses water issues using California’s decades-old water wars as a microcosm for practices which are being implemented globally without considering the consequences. For anyone new to environmental awareness, the experts lay out clearly and succinctly the timeline and circumstances which brought California to where it is today and why it is not sustainable.

In the same way that most sentient humans have finally come around to accepting the realities of climate change, environmental degradation, species extinction, air and water pollution. Writ large, it ends up being nearly impossible to ignore as a problem which is happening now and fast. To some extent the impacts are already being felt on the underclasses, the powerless, the underserved of the populations worldwide. And now it is abundantly clear that the effects of all of this are soon going to be felt by all of us regardless of social status, power and wealth. The bubble of privilege cannot mitigate the need for a certain quality of air that we all need to breathe. The global lack of fresh water cannot be solved as if it is treated as an infinite resource.

California is a monumental example of hubristic engineering. In 1913 a 250 mile acqueduct opened - originating in the lush and verdant Owens River Valley in northern California ending where the city of Los Angeles now sprawls. It was that massive lock on the resources 250 miles away that enabled the city of Los Angeles to be built. The devastation to the water and the land on both sides for the whole length is nearly total desertification. And they are still trying to find ways to pump more of “other people’s water” to slake the ravenous thirst of the citizens of Los Angeles and their grassy lawns and pools, without a thought to conservation, recapturing flood waters, or recycling the fresh water into the ground instead of into the oceans.

There is more, much more grim news. But the point is not to make one go numb to the enormity of the apparatus which is the enemy of us all. There is the fact of the Colorado River being drained to irrigate America’s breadbasket in California agriculture, much of which is industrial in scale and often degrading to the land and soil and the water. What the film wants is for all of us to care enough to find out where our water comes from. Who in America would have dreamed of shortages? Our national abundance has made us bad stewards of the planet. The chickens have come home to roost. There are things that can be done if there is the will. I hope the film achieves it goal. We all need this.

Available on VOD